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If there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that whenever you find yourself in a group of women, whether they be neurosurgeons or nail technicians, the conversation will inevitably turn to the subject of hair — whether one should consider cutting it short, for instance, or the difficulty of finding a good colourist. You could be in the midst of an intense discussion about the future of the euro or global warming, but when the subject of hair comes up everyone is clamouring to get a word in.

Precisely why hair holds such fascination is worth attention: No other physical manifestation of our humanity has been subject to the same charged debate about the politics of race, gender and age as how we wear our hair.

I recall my son as a mere stripling, before he was influenced in any way by fashion, and who seemed to be born with the equanimity of an adult, dissolving into hot tears when he caught his reflection after one overzealous trim.

In some deep, ancient way (think of the ghoulish Victorian mourning lockets encasing snippets of the dearly departed loved one’s curls, or, even further back, the Biblical story of the shorn and weakened Samson) our hair is ourselves.

Hence, perhaps, the strange fixation with hair among fundamentalist religions. Orthodox Jewish women, for instance, are required to wear wigs on top of their own, often shaved, hair. A stray lock peeking out from an Islamic woman’s hijab might, in particularly cruel corners of the world, be cause for a public beating. So sacred (or seductive) is women’s hair adjudged, at least in the eyes of ultrareligious men, that a woman’s spouse is often the only one permitted to see it.

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The craziest hair I have ever seen was on a trek to the ancient hilltop village of Longsheng, China, where the traditional Yao women are famous for their thick floor-length curtain of hair that they wear tucked atop their heads in a vaguely Gibson Girl twist. So prized is this hair, and so fetishized, that they never cut it. The Yao women — proud of their strange genetic gift — immodestly flaunt it to tourists, offering to unroll it to its full, flagrant length in exchange for money. For a little extra, one can hold a swath of the ropy black strands.

For African Americans, hair has always been about the politics of race. “Civilized” black men and women of the Jazz Age went to such great lengths to avoid “nappy” hair that they burned their scalps with home-brewed straightening potions of lye and other caustic agents. Hence the ’60s radicalism behind the Afro, and the “return to roots” message behind Rastafarian dreadlocks. To this day, the beauty salon and barbershop are central to African-American culture and community: At Barack Obama’s inauguration, the streets of Washington DC were flush with celebrants in fanciful hair constructions as complicated as those of the French court of Marie Antoinette.

The first time I cut my hair really, really short was in my early 20s when I was at school in New York. Until then, I had worn my hair long and straight and centre-parted like Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and all the other Ladies of the Canyon. One day on a whim I walked into a salon and told the cute French guy they had assigned me that I wanted my hair cut very short with a little fringe in front.

“Ah, comme Tintin!” exclaimed the cute French guy, who spent the next 90 minutes cutting my hair with tiny fingernail scissors. When he was done, I actually felt shorn, like a baby lamb.

The sensation of seeing myself in this new way was shocking. In the mirror, my eyes looked larger, my real head revealed in its true shape. For days I marvelled at my new look, my new self. I couldn’t stop wondering whether others, too, saw me differently.

Now that I am older and supposed to wear my hair short, I find myself perversely insistent on growing it. Recently I have come to the realization that what I am resisting with my long-again locks is the mantle of sexless cronehood. Fine, take me as a scary witch. Or mutton dressed as lamb. My long hair slipping over my shoulders, blowing with the wind against my neck, makes me feel sexy, up for anything, and alive, damn it.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying is that hair matters. And perhaps the reason we are as passionate about hair as we are about the major issues of the day is that it, too, touches on issues of politics, religion, age and, most of all, identity.

Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.

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